Anna Tokareva

BYMG

BYMG™

An online exhibition at External Pages Gallery, and a part of a larger research project. Built in collaboration with, and with curaton from Ana Meisel.

From the press release:

“Fade and slide animations, habitually implemented in commercial websites to reveal dramatic background images and marketing slideshows, are instead employed to unveil Tokareva’s graphics in BYMG™. Molecular diagrams, schematic cell structures and labeled bin-genome networks are mutated and modified, displaying colourful hyperreal imitations of technical drawings. Various illustrations appear and vanish on random mouse hover commands, while others ease in and out of the window.

Baba Yaga Myco Glitch uses aesthetic means and promotional tactics from biotech companies that seek to enhance their online presence, to question their effect in producing vague company ethea and cryptic narratives. By adapting a specific set of UI and UX methods to increase website visibility, BYMG™ explores how such SEO processes encourage a fabrication of ambiguous tales around medical research institutions. Tokareva has executed this through designing BYMG’s website as a front for the ulterior motives of the antagonistic Baba Yaga, a character often described in Slavic folklore as a villainous witch with equivocal intentions.

While this project aims to expose such storytelling procedures found in SEO management, Tokareva has faith in BYMG™. Baba Yaga’s intentions are routed in miscellaneous alchemic experimentation with chemical reactions, generative codes and homespun agency. The lab’s secret objectives lie in spreading their wild yeasts and self-growing cultures to infect its users with hallucinogenic visions of alternative futures.”

http://externalpages.org/#annatokareva